#i don't know what kind of family activities to draw. so i decided to go with this moment

[heretodefyfate]

Can you draw Child Lin with one of the Reborn protags? I headcanon that they have a wholesome family relationship together. If you're strictly sticking to one then just Child Lin if you want to do so :)

"if i cry over a lemonade, you're not allowed to tell anyone, okay?"

[ikilledmyhamster]

Okay listen, what I love about BTD kid au is that Strade, rire, & sano were friends ever since childhood. I mean it's adorable if you actually think about it 😂

I do have a headcannon story that I would like to tell you all so feel free to read this!

I still don't know how the three met, it's kind of like that one trio where they don't even know how they met each other in the first place so let's just go with that. But I'd figured it would go something like this.

Story: Strade was an only child and had no friends due to his behavior. He met sano when he was around probably 6-7 who was stuck in a pond with ropes around his tail (Sano). Strade upon seeing a young boy with a snake tail, was curious and decided to help him...but the two ended up in the rope and it took 2 hours for them to get themselves free. Strade and sano became friends after that and strade didn't even bother asking about why sano had a tail.

The next part is where the two met rire which is kind of in a weird way. Strade got home from his kindergarten and decided to play with sano as the two were close, sano has an idea to summon a demon, which wasn't normal for a child to say that but hey, he's a naga demon so what do you expect? Anyway, they summoned a demon and you might be asking how and why they did it. Well one; They were pretty dumb kids and also just curious, two; Sano found rire's 'symbol' online for odd reasons and decided to try it. They successfully summoned kid rire but...they interrupted his tea time which made the demon prince angry (Btw he's a prince because his family is still alive, so he ain't the demon king yet). After a full on rampage that goes on for about a few hours, they were able to come into an agreement to become friends.

Childhood Moments: Strade, Rire, & Sano would build their own treehouse in their old neighborhood where they used to live, and they would make the treehouse pretty big. Of course the three had their own rooms and storage for their own stuff, by this time strade had an old camcorder, so he used it to create videos and/or memories of their childhood.

The three would go on adventures and weird places or even terrifying ones. Strades parents never really paid any attention to him so they didn't care if he left the house. Strade likes to draw or doodle in his free time, so he draws a lot of art of him, rire and sano. Sano and strade likes to pull pranks on rire. For example one time, they did a water bucket challenge but instead of it being normal cold water, it was holy water which burned poor kid rire skin. Of course he was not happy, but don't worry...he got his revenge.

Another childhood memory is that the three would occasionally watch horror films like slasher films. Especially paranormal activity, every time there is a demon or spirit that is possessing a person, sano and strade were pretty much scared while rire happily watches the scene. BUTTTT, when it comes to the exorcist scenes...Rire would immediately hold his friends with his tentacles while hiding behind them😂😂 (inspo from the photo above)

Another time, sano and strade did a research and they read that in old Russian ancient times, there used to be a saying that brownies could scare off evil spirits or demons. And so...they tried it on rire, the results did not disappoint them. The moment they bought a brownie cake and placed it on the table in front of rire...the poor boy disappeared. Which confused the two at first, but then they realized it actually works! Rire would stay in hell until he knows for sure, that the brownies were gone.

Treehouse: The treehouse that they built in the forest is still there standing stable till this day, and that treehouse holds a lot of childhood memory. Strade Sano & Rire would often sleep in that treehouse as their comfort zone and also since it's the place they mostly hang out in. They carved their names on the treehouse door, something like this; "LR+SK+S" Which obviously means in order; "Lucien Rire+Sano Kojima+Strade". Of course soon strade had to move out of his old town and so did sano and rire. They left their old treehouse but kept their stuff there.

Present: Whenever Y/N is free they sometimes go to the Kojima brothers house just to hangout or sleep over. One day they stumbled upon an old photo of the main trio. Rire in the center, strade on his left side and sano on his right side. The photo looked like it was taken a few years back and Y/N was able to open the frame and found a note attached to the back of the photo which had coordinates, which if your guessing correctly; Leads to their old treehouse. Akira & Y/N visited that place and found the treehouse with all of their stuff still there in the same places where they left it. And if they went all the way to the back, they would find a wooden box container which is filled with many cassette tapes and writing of dates. Strade would record those childhood videos and put them on cassette tapes so there was a lot of them. Of course, Y/N & Akira ended up watching some of the videos in the end and didn't bother telling sano, strade, or rire.

Anyway that's pretty much my version of the BTD main trio kid AU. Let me now which one should I do next down below here ⬇️⬇️⬇️

(Btw, credits to the art above belongs to @darqx)

[sapphicmsmarvel]

modern au! competition

notes: in elains part i talk shit about The Exorcist. i’m sorry guys that movie is so so bad. Some of these are really short because i didn’t know how to elaborate LOL but yall will get the point. 

Azriel: 

This cranky bitch has beef with your kindle paperwhite. 

You took it everywhere, always made sure it was fully charged and loaded with books. You even used the app on your phone until one day you decided you would always carry your actual kindle with you everywhere. 

When he wanted snuggles and you were reading? You had pushed him away. Until one day, he’d had enough. 

It was a rough day at work, he wanted his girlfriend. He saw you on the couch, with your emotional support water bottle, his hoodie, fuzzy sock-clad feet and a blanket. And you were holding your kindle. 

He knew he wanted to join you in that cuddle pile, so he did. 

He took away your blanket which caused you to yell an indignant, “hey!” Then he spread your legs which had you saying “oh?” 

He rolled his eyes at your dirty mind and laid down on top of you. Your kindle was in the air, he laid his head between your boobs and snuggled in. 

Breathing in your scent, he hummed contentedly. 

He felt you shake with suppressed giggles, “you comfy?”

“Mhm.” He hummed, his eyes closing. 

“My big baby.” You said softly, kissing his head and running your nails through his hair. 

He didn’t need to look up to know you were still reading, just multitasking now. After all, that’s what the pop socket is for. Multitasking while reading. 

(get your heads out of the gutter) 

He loved how happy it made you, though. He also loved the sex that came from the books that you’d want to reenact. 

Cassian: 

don't get him wrong, he loves that you wear makeup because you love it. 

however that damn plumping gloss is gonna kill him. 

“It’s spicy!” 

“You’re being a baby, it’s minty.” 

“it’s fucking spicy!” 

It’s not his fault that your gloss is out to make him croak. He can’t help kissing you though, your lips look so plump and juicy, just perfectly kissable. And the gloss tastes like vanilla cupcakes until the spice kicks in. 

Rhysand: 

He's got beef with the sims. You’ll go missing for hours in your “cozy room” as you call it, and 9 times out of 10, he’ll walk in and see you hunched over like a cave creature playing the sims. It kind of scares the shit out of him because sometimes he’ll walk in on you like that, with a murder podcast playing on your TV. 

Eventually, he loves the game. Because he discovers that you can make your own families. You two have five kids in the sims, because even Sim-Rhysand is horny. 

Eventually he gets his own PC, he’s very excited. Owns and buys you all of the sims packs. 

Feyre: 

Your IPad. You do everything on that thing. Work, planning, reading; writing, even. It’s with you all day, sometimes all night depending on the activity you’re doing. You can’t stop playing candy crush or some other game. She’s fully pulled the IPad out of your grip before to cuddle, and also a few times 

She didn’t get it until you got her her own with procreate installed. And now you’re the one who has to pry her away. She, like Rhysand, has learned the naughty things she can do with her new hobby. AKA, lots of drawings of you. 

Naked, clothed. You two together being naughty. 

She’s learned to love the wonders of an IPad. 

Morrigan: 

fucking theme parks. In the beginning of your relationship she didn’t know how to feel, eventually she fell in love with them. She used to be against them because she hated being sweaty (who doesn’t) but with your help she was able to be comfortable and enjoy a nice theme park day with her girlfriend. 

You two are out of state disney pass holders. Taking random flights on random days for a day at disney. Flying in that morning and leaving that night. Or driving for a long weekend. 

Amren: 

her competition is concerts. you’ll go to any show at any time. Your friends favorite indie band is having a show with 20 dollar tickets? sold you’ll be there. 

She’s not a fan of intense crowds, mosh pits aren’t her scene. But if there’s an artist you wanna go see and your friends can't go? She’s buying you the tickets as an early birthday or christmas gift. She’s even used mother’s day as an excuse to buy you tickets. Or Veterans Day. 

And she calls you dramatic. 

Nesta: 

she genuinely doesn’t understand how you can play video games for hours. She does love it though because you’ll leave her alone to read while you play. 

You rarely play intense games, if you do you’re playing with friends and not some random lobby (because being a woman, a queer woman no less is not fun in random online lobbies). And that’s when you go into a different room because your friends and you are quite loud. 

But when you’re playing stardew valley or any zelda, mario game, or nintendo in general; you’re sitting by her. 

Your usual set up is you both on the couch next to each other, some asmr room video in the background and a few candles lit. 

She can even admit that your video games have awesome soundtracks. 

Elain: 

horror movies. you were a fanatic. On your first date you brought this up to her, nervous she’d be against it. She was all for watching them. She had never seen them, growing up her mother forbid her daughters from watching them. It didn’t stop Feyre and Nesta, however she was a bit of a rule follower. 

She thought it couldn’t be that bad. After all, they're fictional and the effects can be very cheesy. 

However, she hid that she was scared pretty well in the beginning and then when you two saw Jigsaw that killed her “street cred” with you. (her words, not yours) 

So after the intensity of Jigsaw, you had her watch The Exorcist, a movie you thought was ass but was a good movie to introduce her to horror with. 

She ended up thinking the movie was shit, too. But, it gave her a bit of a baseline to go off of.  

After that was The Conjuring universe, then The Paranormal Activity franchise ended up freaking her out in a good way. 

She liked watching supernatural, ghost hunters, and american horror story with you though! And she did enjoy the scream franchise as well as the scary movie franchise! 

She began to love them, and loved the adrenaline. 

She liked the idea of going to a haunted house during halloween, but it scared her a bit more. It was different with a screen in between her and the scare. 

Lucien: 

Your stuffed animal collection. You personified almost everything you owned (which made it a bitch to declutter when you knew you needed to; but you couldn’t stop imagining objects with personalities). 

He loved how passionate you were, how cuddly you always looked however: 

You’re supposed to be cuddling him!! Not a damned stuffed animal! 

Then one time, he came home after a long work trip and found you asleep on the couch, you were waiting for him. 

He found you hugging a fox build-a-bear with one of his shirts on it.  

How can he hate that? 

Eris: 

His own dog is his competition. 

The fucker will cuddle with you then give him a smug ass look like “haha she chose me, she dont want you.” 

He loved the immediate love you had for his (son) pet. And he reacted to you the same way. You two formed a bond, the dog would follow you everywhere around the house. 

His dog was supposed to be a hunting dog, then when you (mom) came into the picture, that’s when you began babying him and forbidding Eris from taking him hunting. 

“My son will not go through the mud! He’s a baby!”

“My love, his whole life’s purpose is hunting. He’s a hunting dog.” 

“His life purpose is being the cute snuggly idiot he is!” Said snuggly idiot was wagging at your feet with an expression on his face that Eris could only describe as a “you go, mom!” look. 

“What if he gets hurt?” Your bottom lip wobbled and he knew he couldn’t say no to you. 

You were sensitive when it came to animals. It was pretty easy to make you cry, you just had to look at the dog being cute and you’d start bawling. 

But, he loved waking up in the morning to you snuggled into him with his beloved (but an asshole) dog with you two. 

Even when the dog pushes in between the two of you in the middle of the night. 

Tarquin: 

Surfing. He can’t believe he’s competing with his own hobby. 

He introduced you to it, but you cannot stop. You spend hours out in the ocean, and he wishes he could be out there with you all the time. But he’s always working with the city's ocean conservation teams and is the leading man in marine biology in your city.  So he can’t leave the office a lot, but when he can, he does join you in the surf. 

You two began a surfing contest to raise money for ocean conservation too. 

[ckret2]

Chapter 16 of human Bill has taken an "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me" approach to being the Mystery Shack's prisoner (title TBD), featuring:

Also featuring: Ford and Mabel bonding... until things go very, very wrong. Thanks Bill.

####

October 2012

As Stan turned the corner, he paused to let his eyes adjust as he came out of the blinding evening sun into the shadows of a tight, unobtrusive street, then shuffled up to where Ford was waiting. "All right, I think we shook the cops," he muttered. "The were-rats should keep 'em distracted. Smart move, splitting up to lead them to each other." He rummaged through the bag of ("borrowed") groceries that had caused them all this trouble, looking for a stick of cured meat he'd had his eye on.

"Mm." That was all Ford said.

Stan looked sharply at Ford. "Hey, you okay? The rats didn't get you, did they?" He glanced over Ford for any torn clothes or blood.

"No—sorry, I'm fine. Just..." He gestured at the storefront across the street. "Distracted."

Stan followed his gesture. He couldn't read the language on the signs, but he didn't need to: the pictures in the windows—tarot cards, palmistry charts, a hand-painted poster of a crystal ball, all surrounded by unlit neon tubes shaped into stars—made it clear enough just what kind of shop this was. Stan laughed. "Hey, it looks like what Ma did with the pawn shop after Dad passed. When we're back in the States, I oughta find a picture for you. Or maybe Shermie can 'e-mail' us one, I think his kid was 'digitalizing' the old family photos..." He trailed off as he saw what Ford was really staring at.

Amongst the other dark neon lights, there was a single larger one, just over the name of the shop: a triangle with an eye.

Stan shuddered. "Ugh. I'm never gonna be able to look at those things the same way again, are you?"

"I haven't been able to for over thirty years," Ford said. "It's funny—in most civilized dimensions in the multiverse, that symbol is incredibly taboo, because as soon as it's drawn it becomes his eye. I only ever saw it used as the direst warning in places tainted by the Nightmare Realm—places he could already see."

Stan snorted. "Coming home must've been a rude shock, huh?"

It was true—Ford saw Bill peering from every dollar, winking slyly at him from strangers' gold rings, standing solemn vigil over graveyards from the headstones. Ford remembered the first time he'd returned to his study: of course he'd known that all his art of Bill was still there, but he'd been stunned by the sheer quantity of eyes watching him, ready to welcome him home. He'd awkwardly hidden himself beneath a bedsheet like a ghost to keep Bill from staring at him as he went around the room, covering every tapestry, drawing, and statue with black curtains. He hoped Bill hadn't been actively watching then. He knew he'd looked stupid.

"You don't know the half of it." Ford nodded toward the psychic shop. "Looking at that face now feels like seeing a toxic waste warning sign."

"Do you think she knows?" Stan asked.

"'She'?"

"The psychic!" Apparently, Stan had decided the psychic was a woman. "D'you think she knows what that is? Did he slip her prophecies to start up her business? Or is it just a spooky magic symbol to her?"

Stan was probably expecting Ford to vaguely speculate—but instead, he eyed the symbol critically. "It's got a slit pupil, which is always a worrying sign," he said, "but that could just be an aesthetic choice. If it had his clothing or limbs, I'd know for sure it's meant to be him, but without..."

As they'd spoken, the evening had crept on and the shadows in the alley had deepened; and now it was dark enough that someone inside the shop flipped the neon lights on. Multicolored stars danced around the window. The triangle lit up bright yellow. The pupil and top eyelid had burned out, so now it looked like the Eye of Providence was perpetually asleep, eye shut.

Stan and Ford both shivered.

"That's probably a coincidence, right?" Stan said. "That's—that's just bad luck."

"There's absolutely no scientific reason why Bill's death would cause depictions of his face to—um—malfunction," Ford said. "It's definitely a coincidence." He said it like he was sure.

"Right," Stan said. "C'mon, we should head back to the beach before someone finds our boat." He turned away from the shop. As he walked, he fished his wallet out of his pocket, rifled through the money until he found some American currency, and squinted at it to make sure Bill's eye was still open.

Ford didn't move. He was still staring at the triangle.

Did she know, he wondered? (She or he or whoever owned this shop.) Did Bill have a worshiper here? Perhaps just another distant believer who'd been recruited by one of the micro-cults Bill left in his wake, five degrees and fifty years removed from a former "student" that Bill had "inspired" and then abandoned?

Or had Bill met them in their dreams? Had he been summoned up to give them inspiration and knowledge of the future? Did they remember Bill as the central figure in a visionary dream that now made up the core of their spirituality? Maybe he'd visited them more than once, while trying to decide whether they'd be useful to him? Perhaps he'd been grooming the fortune teller into his minion, feeding them lines he wanted to pass on to a local politician or scientist? Did he ever play board games with them?

Did they worship him still?

Did they know their god was dead?

Stan called from the end of the street, "Ford?" 

"Coming." Ford tore his gaze away from the dead face. "I kept expecting it to blink."

Stan laughed nervously. "Yeah, real funny."

Stan and Ford watched each other from their peripheral vision as they turned the corner, to make sure neither of them tried to glance back to check.

They returned to their boat, set sail, and had dinner. And when Stan went to bed, Ford sat out on the deck, looked at the stars—and wept.

He'd cried when he'd thought his brother had lost his memories forever. He hadn't cried in the month and a half since then. He didn't want anyone to watch him grieve the worst monster he'd ever met.

####

There'd been an ache in Ford's chest for over thirty years—an empty pit that once held awe—a dark void that used to be filled with starlight. Ford knew now that, metaphorically speaking, the divine light Bill put off had never been anything but optical illusions with flashlights and mirrors. But even so—even so, nothing and nobody had inspired such sublime wonder in Ford since.

During his lowest moments out in the multiverse, starving and exhausted and despairing, he'd irrationally wondered if the unimpressable depression left in Bill's wake was evidence that Bill had been truly that great, too great for a human like Ford to understand, and the shadow cast on Ford's life in Bill's absence was the natural consequence of turning away from something godlike.

Ford had gotten over that. He'd recovered, he'd grown. He understood the truth: Bill's parlor tricks had dazzled his eyes so thoroughly that now he couldn't detect the subtle glimmer of the truly wondrous. He wondered if his eyes would ever adjust to the dark again.

Whether he liked it or not, he missed the way mind-blowing awe felt. He missed being dazzled. 

There were days when he wasn't sure what he resented Bill for more: vomiting so much glittery garbage into his soul, or stopping.

####

June 2013

When Ford went looking for his briefcase to make a trip to Portland, he found it opened in the kitchen. He shouldn't have left it in the kitchen. His five-page copy of the text from a purportedly-extraterrestrial prehistoric cave painting was spread out across the table.

The mysterious, unintelligible alien text had been fully translated.

With purple crayon.

Into a second alien language.

Ford could have strangled Bill.

And what made him angriest was how excited he was over this new puzzle.

The original cave panting had consisted of hundreds of tiny symbols in an unknown language from an unknown species, painted on rock, the text faded over time. He hadn't even known whether all the symbols were recognizable as their originals. He'd suspected there'd never be a translation in his lifetime, if indeed there ever was. Bill's translation implicitly said, yes, there is a knowable translation. Said, and you can know the translation too. Said, I've made it into a fun game for you. Said, all you have to do is play along.

He would not play along.

He stuffed the papers back in his bag where they belonged, added the stack of notes he'd made for his trip, slung the briefcase over his shoulder and against his back, and went looking for his great-niece.

####

"Hey Grunkle Ford!" Mabel waved from the living room table. "Wanna play fairy chess?" She was wearing a black-and-white checkerboard-patterned sweater with a blue fairy on her chest. Apparently, this was her plan for the day.

Ford paused outside the living room. "What's 'fairy' chess?"

"It's like normal chess, but you get to decorate the chess pieces and give them weird new rules. Look! I made a princess and a unicorn!" She held up a queen piece with a yarn ponytail and a knight piece with a clay horn. "Wanna play? You can make up any kind of piece you want and I can decorate it for you! Or I can give you the rook with the dragon wings!"

Ford laughed. "That sounds fun. Where did you come up with fairy chess?"

Mabel hesitated, her smile slightly flagging.

"Ah." Of course. He would teach her made-up chess varieties. Ford cleared his throat. "Actually, I'm planning to visit Portland today. There's a weird-looking shop I saw while Soos was driving Stan and I from the airport, and I've been meaning to visit it."

"Oh." Mabel's smile wilted completely. She placed her princess and unicorn back on the chess board. "Yeah. That's fine. I could ask Dipper if he wants to play. Unless he's going with you..."

"I was actually going to ask if you'd like to come."

Mabel's head whipped toward Ford, eyes wide. "Really?"

"Sure, it seemed up your alley! I'm going to a crystal shop—"

"WHAT!" Mabel was on her feet and bounding across the room. "Shut up, I love crystals! They're like jumbo glitter for adults!"

Ford laughed. "I thought you might be interested!"

Mabel went on, "And you know those gift shops with all the shelves of glass and crystal sculptures? I love looking at those! I've always wanted to get one, but my parents think I'd break it. They're probably right."

Ford flashed back to the devastation Mabel wrought on the gift shop snow globes last summer. Well. Maybe her parents had a point, but. "You just have to be careful with it during transport! I got one of those souvenir glass statues during my roadtrip from college to Gravity Falls, and it survived all sorts of gnome invasions and eye-bat battles. I wonder where Stan put it?"

"What did it look like?"

"Mothgar." Did they still make Mothgar movies? "She's a beautiful, heroic moth—who's been radioactively mutated into a giant fire-breathing monster. I consider her one of my heroes. Her flame breath held her statue in the air."

"That sounds awesome!" Mabel bounced on her feet excitedly. "I'll be right back! I've gotta change clothes before we go." She pounded up the stairs.

Ford wondered if Mabel would like watching Mothgar, or any of the other Lizilla monster movies. He and Stan had practically grown up on those films; it would be nice to pass his love of them on to someone else in the family. Maybe she'd find them boring. It sounded like kids these days were more into computer-generated movies...

His train of thought gently derailed as he slowly became aware of a dangerous predator watching him.

He looked around—living room, kitchen, hallway, front door. Nothing. He looked up. Bill was standing in the shadows of the attic stairway landing, leaning against the corner where the stairs turned, peering down at Ford.

Ford scowled.

Bill grinned. "Crystals, huh?" There was a mocking edge to his smile. "Doesn't that sound fun. I bet she'll just love that."

That was the idea, yes. "What are you getting at, Bill."

"'Getting at'?" Bill repeated innocently. "What's there to get at? I just think it's nice of you to do something nice for her."

"Uh-huh."

"Especially after all the time you've spent favoring her brother."

There it was. And the dig struck home, too. Ford's stomach twisted. He'd never forgive himself for only confiding in Dipper about his history with Bill or the danger of the rift—and in the process, setting up Mabel to be the next one Bill tricked and exploited.

And as much as he wished he could say otherwise, he hadn't done much better in the months since then. Shortly after arriving home, Dipper had started having nightmares about Bill possessing or harassing him. When Dipper had those nightmares, usually Ford was the first person he called. He didn't want to disturb his parents or sister more than necessary, and he knew Ford kept odd hours in odd time zones and might be available at 3 a.m. California time—and most importantly, Ford had had more restless nights than he could count, waking up on strange worlds from nightmares of Bill. Ford was the only one who could understand what Dipper was going through: that unique sanity-shaking terror that came from knowing it was a dream, but still not knowing whether it was real.

Those late-night reassurance sessions and the conversations he'd had with Dipper after he calmed down had brought both of them closer. Ford was glad that when Dipper had most needed somebody, Ford was able to be that person—but he hated that in giving Dipper that support, he'd only widened the gap in the attention he gave Dipper and Mabel. 

But she had her own life, with friends and school and hobbies—so many hobbies—Dipper had told Ford, laughing, about how she'd had to juggle her parkour lessons with library craft classes—and Ford didn't have excuses to talk to Mabel the way he did Dipper, and so what could Ford do about it? (What could Ford do about it? He actually didn't know. He'd always been abysmal at socialization, even just keeping up with friends and family. And that was before he'd gone thirty years without steady human company.)

Ford had hoped he could make it up to Mabel this summer.

And then Bill happened.

He was smirking down at Ford like he knew he'd hit a bullseye.

Ford wondered how much Bill knew—if he'd assumed that the way Ford neglected Mabel last summer had continued, or if he'd had some way to spy on them over the past school year... or if she'd told him. "My family's none of your business, Bill."

Ford could almost see the gears in Bill's head turning—no doubt mentally trying out various retorts to find the most cutting—but when he spoke again, he simply changed topics. "So hey, what'd you think of that translation? Helpful at all?"

Dryly, Ford said, "You mean the one you translated into another alien language?"

"Wrong-o. I translated it into an alien writing system. It's a human language."

"What?" Ford rummaged through his briefcase for the "translated" pages. "Which language?"

"C'mon, Fords—Ford, where's the fun in just telling you? I want to see if you can figure it out yourself," Bill said. As Ford's scowl deepened, Bill added, "Give you a hint: it's a language you've studied."

A language he'd studied... Did that mean only second languages, or was English an option? No, if English was a possibility, Bill probably would have said "it's a language you know." Unless he was trying to distract Ford from the possibility it was English. He'd keep English on the list. He ought to start by counting up the number of distinct letters, if Bill had used a simple substitution cipher that might rule out some options...

He wasn't sure how long he'd been staring at the first page of the crayon translation when he heard the attic bedroom door open. Mabel came bounding downstairs in a hot pink sweater that said "YOU ROCK!" over a drum kit. "I used to have a sweater with a crystal heart on it but I think I left it in Piedmont! This'll have to do..." She slowed at the landing, giving Bill a questioning look, and then stopped when she saw Ford looking up at them. "What's up?"

Before Ford could speak up, Bill said, "I was asking Stanford about an alien translation I helped him with this morning, that's all! I don't think he's too grateful. Hey—crystal shop, right?" He beamed at Mabel. "Bring me something fun!"

Mabel beamed back. "Ok—!"

"No," Ford said.

"No," Mabel immediately repeated. "Nope! Nuh-uh, crystals are off the list of acceptable prisoner amenities."

Bill sighed deeply. "All right, fine. I guess I'll just go without the simple pleasure of a cool-looking rock in my final days."

Mabel laughed. "You're such a whiner. I'll draw you a stupid rock." She hopped down the stairs. "See you later!"

"Hey, Shooting Star," Bill said. "Stay safe out there, okay?" The way he said it like a warning, and the way Mabel immediately paused mid-step, made the hair on the back of Ford's neck stand on end. 

He held open the door, glared up at Bill, and said calmly, "We'll be back by dinner."

Bill didn't reply. He just smiled.

The moment the door shut, Mabel looked up at Ford, brows furrowed. "Sooo... what was all that about an alien translation?"

Ford showed Mabel the papers. "He rifled through my bag when I wasn't looking, put a translation in a cipher, and dared me to crack it."

"Ah!" Mabel's puzzled look evaporated. "I knew he was up to something! At least he's just being a jerk instead of a supervillain." She laughed.

Ford smiled in relief. He hadn't lost her yet. "This time, anyway."

"This time!"

As they walked around the shack to Stan's car, Mabel tentatively took Ford's hand. He squeezed hers back just a little too tight.

####

Part of Mabel was nervous to hang out with Ford—just Ford, without Dipper or Stan there as well. He loved her, of course—she knew he loved her, and she loved him—but they didn't simply hang out. Last summer, she'd usually been the one to talk to him first, and they rarely spoke over the school year unless it was part of a family call. She got it—last summer he'd been busy with Bill stuff, during the school year he'd been busy with adventuring, and this summer he was busy with Bill stuff again—and Ford and Dipper had more in common to talk about—so it was fine, really. She understood. But even so, being alone with him kinda made her feel like she was in trouble.

But she'd had nothing to worry about. As they hit the road, there'd been a few minutes of awkward small talk—the kinds of questions adults always asked kids when they couldn't think to ask anything else, so, what kinds of classes are you taking next year—but once they hit common ground the conversation got rolling. Mabel had agonized over whether to join the yearbook or take art class, since she only had room in her electives for one, and had finally settled on art; Ford revealed that one year in high school he'd only taken biology and physics and passed up chemistry so that he could take an art class, had kicked himself over it when taking college chemistry courses, but now decades later he was glad he'd made the effort to preserve his artistic side even as he cultivated his scientific mind. Somehow, even though she'd spent all summer looking over Dipper's shoulder at Ford's illustrations in Journal 3, it had never quite dawned on her that being a scientist didn't mean Ford wasn't also an artist.

They talked about their preferred drawing tools—Ford liked the precision and detail of pencils and pens, while Mabel preferred the smooth drawing experience, vibrant hues, and color-blending potential of crayons. They talked about what they liked drawing—Ford typically drew from life, but said he greatly admired Mabel's creative imagination. Ford talked about blueprints and engineering diagrams like they were artwork, talked about protractors and compasses and rulers like they were art tools; and Mabel figured that blueprints were like very angular versions of the intricate star, swirl, and squiggle patterns she liked filling page margins with, so maybe that was a kind of art. They agreed that the greatest artistic masters of the modern age were the people who made those crazy paintings for the covers of fantasy paperback novels. They both couldn't stand watercolor painting and didn't understand how people could control the paint well enough to make it look good, rather than just sort of leak faintly-colored puddles around the page—although Mabel, at least, was willing to give watercolors another shot.

And from artwork they moved on to talking about Mabel's hopes for high school and Ford's memories of that time—the good and the bad. (Ford asked Mabel to have mercy if the class nerd ever awkwardly attempted to flirt with her at a school dance; she could tell the nerd "no" if she wanted, just please don't pour punch all over his suit.) And then they talked about music (they were surprised at how many synth-poppy new-wavy favorites they had in common, and Mabel was heartbroken to learn how much of the 80s he still had to catch up on), and then about all the new technology Mabel thought Ford had probably missed out on and the equivalent technology he'd encountered out in the multiverse, and then some of the adventures he'd had and people he'd met out in other dimensions...

And Mabel kept expecting Bill to come up, but he never did.

The hour drive from Gravity Falls to the outskirts of Portland consisted mostly of wide flat roads self-consciously hustling through forests, as if the cars were embarrassed visitors who'd stepped into the wrong room. Low wooden buildings clustered together in twos and threes beneath the trees like dogs sitting at their owners' feet. The occasional A-frame house peered curiously down at the road through the pines and firs. Mabel peered curiously back.

In the distance, hazy blue mountains bristling with trees tried to bite the sky. Sometimes, Mabel could imagine an X-shaped rip in the sky vomiting colors onto a distant mountain. Not for the first time, she wondered what Weirdmageddon had looked like from outside Roadkill County. She'd searched online, but never found any pictures.

They passed a bright red shop with dozens of wood-carved statues of bears and Bigfoot in the parking lot, and a cute little white house with a metal sculpture of an ostrich sitting in the front yard, and a teeny tiny shack next to a chop-your-own-Christmas-tree farm—"You hack it, we'll pack it". Seeing a gas station beside a trailer-sized drive-thru coffee shop felt like stumbling upon a carnival. Eventually, the trees peeled back to reveal a strip of colorful but run-down local shops lining either side of Route 26; which bloomed into a proper small town, houses painted cloud white and sky blue on one side of the road, a hunter green motel-style apartment building on the other side, though Mabel could always see the trees waiting just a few streets beyond the main road; and then another small town, which beat the trees back even further; and then their surroundings gently became the suburban outskirts of Portland as they got on the highway.

"The crystal shop was somewhere on the north side of the highway," Ford said, gesturing to the right. So far, all that had gone by on the right had been trees, warehouses, and distant clusters of houses. "I didn't get a long look at it, but it had some mystical-sounding name and it was in a row of storefronts with a pole sign next to the highway. The sign had a cutout in the middle for a stained glass window shaped like a diamond."

"Oooh, fancy."

"And very distinctive. We should have no trouble finding the place again."

The highway ran elevated above the homes and businesses below. After a few miles, a railroad wove up alongside the highway. Ford glanced at the railroad with a puzzled frown. Mabel asked, "Should we have passed it by now?"

"I'm... not sure. I thought we would have—when we were traveling the other direction, I seem to remember I didn't see it long before we exited the highway—but..." He trailed off. "We can't possibly have missed it. That sign stood out like a sore, bejeweled thumb."

Mabel made a mental note to try bedazzling her fingernails. "Are you sure it was on this side of the highway?"

"Positive. I saw it to my left as we were traveling east and considering asking Soos and Stan if they'd mind exiting the highway to visit it, but I decided that would take too much time since it was on the wrong side of the highway and we'd have to do a U-turn. So now it should be on our side of the highway." He gestured demonstratively to the right. "I'm sure of it."

"Okay." Mabel propped her chin in her hand and stared out the window again. A wall of concrete and trees rose up along the right side of the highway, and Ford's frown deepened.

When they reached the exit for the airport, Mabel finally had to admit to herself that there probably was no crystal shop.

Her stomach flip-flopped as Ford silently exited the highway, pulled into a strip mall parking lot, and parked. He stared out the windshield, frowning in deep thought, staring into the distance.

This is it, Mabel thought, ankles twisting together, fingers digging into the bench seat cushion.

Ford said, "We can't have missed the shop. That sign was taller than anything in the area. We couldn't have overlooked it if we'd tried."

Mabel's stomach slowly de-flipped. "Maybe they closed?" she suggested. "Or maybe something knocked the sign down!" In the week and a half since Ford had last come this way.

"Maybe," Ford said dubiously.

Mabel pulled out her phone to search for Portland crystal shops and rock shops. "There's some shops in town, but I... don't see any up here? Maybe they closed years ago and only just took the sign down?"

"Hmm. It seems unlikely, but... I don't know what else could have happened." He glanced at Mabel's phone. "What are you looking at? Do you have the yellow pages in there?"

"Um..." Mabel shrugged. "Kinda?"

Ford sighed. "Well, if we can't find the crystal shop I saw, I suppose we could visit another one. I did promise you crystals. Can you give me directions with that thing?"

Mabel gave him a hesitant, thoughtful look; but then she nodded, grinned, and said, "Sure! You drive, I'll navigate! This'll be easy!"

####

They missed the store four times.

####

The store Mabel had dug up was a general magic shop named Lunar Blessings, on the ground level of a mixed-use building. It was surrounded by apartments up above, a beauty salon to the left, and a tax preparation service to the right. They carefully stowed Stan's car in the parking garage.

"For my thirtieth birthday, I made a trip to Portland and got a cake at a bakery that used to be on this block," Ford said, looking up at the compact brick-like building that now filled the block. "It must have gone out of business." So many little things had changed.

Mabel was treating the sidewalk like a huge hopscotch board as they approached the magic shop, taking huge leaps between each concrete square. As the storefront came into sight, she said, "You know those souvenir shops with trays of polished rocks and little bags you can fill up?"

"The little brown suede bags? Yes, I've seen those. I think they're terrific gifts for young fans of geology." He probably would have gotten one himself as a child, but he hadn't started seeing them until adulthood.

"I have like eight of those bags!" Mabel declared. "I collect them whenever I can! Last summer I tried to talk Grunkle Stan into adding them to the Mystery Shack, but he said they were too easy to shoplift. He let me buy a fake gold nugget for half price, though!" She looked up at Ford hopefully. "A store full of crystals probably has something like that, right? Or at least a few cheap small rocks? Those bags are only, like, five dollars."

Solemnly, Ford said, "Your shopping budget is fifty dollars."

Mabel stumbled her last jump and almost fell. "What! Are you serious!"

"I've been in places like this before. These days you can't get anything decent for five dollars." He offered her a half smile. "Anyway, I missed out on thirty years of spoiling my nephew and my great-niece and great-nephew. I've got to make up for lost time."

Mabel flung her arms around Ford—"Thank you thank you thank you!"—and flung open the store door. "Rockmongers! Show me to your biggest, fanciest crystals! You've got a big spender in the house!" The door swung shut.

By the time Ford made it in, Mabel was saying, somewhat sheepishly, "Show me to your second fanciest crystals." Ford spied her next to an amethyst geode almost as tall as she was and hurried over.

Mabel took his hand and whispered, "You weren't kidding. Fifty dollars doesn't take you far in this place."

Ford grinned. "Funny, isn't it? Considering that you can just dig this stuff out of the ground."

Mabel nodded. "Like potatoes."

Like potatoes. Ford couldn't believe he'd missed out on thirteen years of this kid.

####

The shop boasted books on metaphysics and magic spells; sculptures depicting an undifferentiated mix of global religious figures and fantasy creatures; fake dream catchers with plastic beads and neon-dyed feathers; shelves stuffed with herbs, incense, tarot cards, and more; and most importantly of all: crystals, crystals, rocks, and crystals. Raw stones, polished tumbled stones, carved into figurines and mystical shapes, arranged by rock type in roughly rainbow order around the walls.

It was the kind of place where, once upon a time, Ford would have eagerly spent half an afternoon, browsing the books for something intellectually stimulating amidst the rows of hokey hocus-pocus, scoffing at the promised protections listed on the cards by each type of crystal but still glancing over the crystals themselves for something that might look pleasant on his desk. Not a believer in the melting pot of New Age beliefs being peddled, but still acknowledging he'd dedicated his life to seeking the same things people sought in shops like this.

He was beginning to wonder if he'd ever feel comfortable in a magic shop again. 

He'd hardly been in the shop a minute before he saw a gold-foiled pyramid with an Eye of Horus on the side. And then small pyramids constructed out of seven layers of stone, forming an inverted rainbow from purple down to red. "Divine Eye"-brand incense sticks with a brown logo stamped onto each package depicting an uncannily realistic eye on a pyramid. Milky translucent selenite pyramids. Multiple different tarot decks—simple woodcut designs, complex oil paintings, punkish collage art—that featured an eye in a triangle somewhere on the box art. Shiny black pyramids with copper coils wrapped around them. A poster with a psychedelic Eye of Providence. Pyramids in a dozen other colors and stones. With so many hostile triangles around, even the familiar, watchful nazar and eyed hamsa amulets now seemed to stare at him too hard.

It was almost a relief when Ford spotted, between sculptures of Shiva and a severe-looking angel, one sculpture that was unmistakeably Bill himself. He was seated with his legs in lotus position, "floating" by attaching to a wall of flames behind him, with two blue glass flames in his hands. Anything else in this shop left Ford with the nervous uncertainty of whether the artist had been depicting Bill, or just an innocuous Eye of Providence symbol a hundred generations removed from its initial inspiration. But this sculpture, down to the hat and bow tie, left no doubt.

Ford reminded himself that it shouldn't be a comfort to see Bill's face; and he didn't like that he had to remind himself.

He gingerly pictured up the sculpture, surprised at how light it was, and inspected the bottom. It had a logo stamped on it that matched the logo on sculptures of at least a dozen other less malevolent entities in the store; the shop had probably bought them en masse and wasn't affiliated with Bill. But somewhere out there was an artist who was. Ford wondered where they were.

####

"Grunkle Ford!" Mabel bounded up to him, grinning. 

Ford flinched when his name was called and turned away from the shelf he'd been inspecting a little too fast, like he'd been caught doing something wrong—but he gave her his full, polite attention. "Yes?"

"Look what I found in the window! It makes rainbows when the sunlight hits it! Like a prism-pyramid! A prismid! A pyrismid?" She shrugged. "Anyway, isn't it awesome! Free rainbows, everywhere, forever!" She beamed at Ford, holding her clear glass pyramid up for him to inspect; but when she saw the look on his face, she slowly lowered it. "What's wrong?"

Ford forced a tense smile. "Oh, it's... I'm sorry, Mabel. You're right, it is very impressive. But—" He winced, glancing away, voice dropping, "Bill happens to be fond of those, too. I used to have—dozens of those."

Mabel's cheeks heated up. "Oh." Now that she thought back, she distantly recalled seeing a similar pyramid in the room with the switcheroo carpet, although she'd never seen it in the sunlight. Stupid, stupid, stupid. "Sorry. I can put it back. I saw some pink cats and these resin hearts filled with gold flakes? They were cute."

It took Ford a second to speak; Mabel wasn't sure he'd even heard what she'd said. "He didn't put the idea of getting one of these in your head, did he?"

"What? No!" Mabel said. "Of course not! When would he have even brought it up?"

"You... have been spending a lot of time around him lately."

"Pffft!" Mabel rolled her eyes. "Like when?"

####

"Okay," Stan called from the kitchen, a tray of raw burgers in front of him, "ready to start grilling! How does everyone want their burgers? Your options are 'medium rare' and 'overcooked.'"

Mabel stuck her head in the kitchen. "I want mine with sprinkles mixed in!"

Stan grimaced. "Sweetie, that sounds awful—"

Bill stuck his head in over Mabel's. "I want sprinkles too."

"I'm not making you a burger!"

Mabel chanted, "Sprinkles, sprinkles—" and Bill joined in, "—sprinkles, sprinkles, sprinkles—!"

####

Mabel pointed at one of the cartoon animal drawings on the blackboard. "And the orange one is...?"

Bill, sitting on the living room floor with a notepad and a yellow pencil, raised his hand, even though he was Mabel's only audience. "Teddy Tender!"

"And his job is...?"

"Healing! Uh—doctoring and social reconciliation! He's like a therapist medic."

"Correct! Full points!"

"Yes!"

"And the indigo one?"

Bill squinted at the fishy-looking creature. "The Mystic Dolphin."

"Close enough, I'll give it to you! Misty the Dolphin. Her job?"

Bill frowned. "Psychic powers."

"No."

"Purple has psychic powers."

"No!"

"Who has psychic powers, then!"

"Nobody has psychic powers, man, we've been over this!"

Bill groaned. "Is Misty going to be on the test?"

"Of course she is! We can't just skip over Misty! Indigo gets shortchanged in artistic depictions of rainbows enough as it is!"

"Misty is stupid! She can't even visit the rest of the critters!" Bill chucked his notebook at the blackboard. It smacked it harmlessly and flopped to the floor.

Mabel gave him a stern look. "You'll never grasp the deeper thematic concepts in Color Critters if you can't see that Misty's an equal part of the team regardless of her handicaps."

Bill groaned again.

####

"Hey dudes," Soos said, opening the attic door. "Do you know where my laundry went? I can't find my green t-shirt, and—"

Mabel was wearing Soos's green t-shirt, which went down to her calves like a loose dress. Bill was hot glueing construction paper flowers all over the shirt.

Arms outstretched in a T shape, Mabel said, "I'm the flower queen."

"She's the flower queen," Bill said.

Soos looked between them both, flashed Mabel a double thumbs up, said, "You look beautiful, dawg," and shut the door.

####

Mabel kicked a foot sheepishly. "I haven't been spending that much time with him."

"That was all in the last three days," Ford said.

Mabel winced. "Okay, fine—but—it's all been harmless stuff! Nothing Bill can use to conquer the world or anything! I'm not even letting him use the scissors! And I promise he's not doing anything evil under my supervision. He's actually been really well behaved—"

"That's exactly what worries me!" Ford snapped. He sighed harshly. "Mabel—I'm not surprised he's treating you decently. It's what I expected. I... I've actually been meaning to talk to you about this for a few days."

Mabel immediately went cold. Stay safe out there, okay? "Oh. Yeah?"

"I understand you're just trying to be kind, but considering who we're dealing with here—and how willing he is to exploit and abuse even our best virtues—I'm worried you're not being careful enough around him."

Mabel was never careful enough, was she? Not even careful enough to be trusted with a snow globe, much less anything important. Voice thick, she asked, "Is that why we're here?" She gestured around the magic shop.

Ford hesitated just long enough to give her her answer. "I... didn't think this was a conversation we should have inside the shack."

Mabel looked down at her hands, saw the stupid glass pyramid, and nearly flung it on the floor in frustration. Instead, she set it on the nearest shelf. Don't break anything. Under her breath, she muttered, "Bill said you'd do something like this."

"Bill said? Bill said?! Of course he would, that's just like him. What kind of nonsense has he been filling your head with?"

####

"Honestly, I'm surprised Ford hasn't said anything about you talking to me yet," Bill said, carefully taping construction paper petals together into flowers. "But mark my words—if he's taken this long, it's only because he's waiting for an opportunity to scold you where I can't overhear. He'll probably lure you out somewhere fun—go to the zoo or something. Then he'll let you have it."

"Pfff, come on!" Mabel focused on cutting out the next few flower petals. "He wouldn't 'let me have it.' If it bothered him that much, he'd have said so by now."

"You, my friend, have never seen him get really mad. I have. For the sake of argument, maybe I deserved it, fine—but he's got a tendency to aim that hate at anybody I'm friends with, too. So don't think you're safe."

Mabel paused, then shook her head. "No." She threw another bunch of petals at Bill to tape together. "He wouldn't hate me. We're family."

"If you were your brother, I'd agree with you. As it is, though..." Bill dumped a half dozen finished flowers in Mabel's lap. "Honestly, I can't even tell how he feels about you. Can you?"

####

Mabel flinched. "Obviously what he's filling my head with isn't nonsense, because he was right! You took me all the way to Portland by promising a stupid crystal shop that doesn't exist—"

"What?! Mabel, that's ridiculous! Just listen to m—"

"Why are you yelling! Why are you mad at me, I was only trying to be nice to him!" She let out a sob. "I didn't do anything wrong this time!"

Ford froze. "Mabel..."

She ran out of the crystal shop, crying. Ford watched her go, paralyzed. Mad at her? He was mad at Bill, if anybody. Mad at her?

He turned helplessly toward the shopkeeper, as if the only other adult in the store could help him out. "I'm... sorry for the disturbance." 

The shopkeeper shrugged her shoulder in vague sympathy. "She upset over some guy?"

"Not that way." Thank goodness for that. "She's just..." He sighed. "She's been making friends with a very bad influence."

####

The entire crystal shop trip was initially one super long chapter that I cut in two. They would have been about equal length if I'd ended this chapter after Ford saw the Bill statue. I decided not to do that. I did that to be mean. ♡

[y-vna]

Just so it's clear, one of my big dni crits is this:

TW: My rant includes HEAVY topics of ed (eating disorders) and intentionally starving yourself/unhealthy weight loss 🙁.

This post is also ULTRA long, will definitely contain grammar and spelling mistakes, and I'm not going to say 100% everything here is accurate information, as I'm a human and I make mistakes too.

Let me get this clear, I dont mean anyone harm with this post. My intention isn't to hate or attack/hurt anyone to make them feel upset. I know that having an ed is a serious matter. I have friends and family who actively have/had these kinds of eds, so im not uneducated on this subject and I do understand it to a very in-depth degree. This is not to say I know everything about this topic, however.

It is definitely not easy to recover from, and lots of people struggle from it every day. I am NOT saying people with this disorder are any less human than anyone else. I'm saying it's toxic for those who do have it since it actually harms your body a lot, and pushing it on others (not the fact you have it in the first place) is something I don't support.

So respectfully, if you do support/promote eds as a positive thing, or are/follow/interact with blogs who do, BLOCK ME AND DNI. thank you.

I love everyone for who they are inside, regardless of what their body looks like. And I'm telling you right now, as someone who tried so hard to have a perfect body and stop eating bc im super insecure, it's not worth it, and it makes you feel so shitty. I love you, whoever is reading this, no matter what. So please don't change who you are just to make others happy :( <3

--

So I was looking thru tumblr, and this one post kept getting shown to me where people were talking about basically the idea of: "its worth it to keep losing that undesired weight, you'll see results soon" as like a motivational thing. The tags (straight up tells you it's supposed to be inspo to becoming skinny and supports the idea having an ed is the only way to get a dream bod), and their whole blog had ed encouragement/motivation. To keep...starving, i guess.?? Despite their user being about being strong and healthy, nothing about this is healthy or keeps your body strong.

I didn't decide to write a whole rant about just that part of the post because I didn't start getting super concerned until i read the notes/comments (since i had seen a lot of these 'tw : ed' blogs before already). What I saw was that tons of users were promoting starving yourself as a goal and a good thing, and basically glorifying having an ed. And also using kpop idols with skinny and perfect figures like wonyoung to tell others that (almost a literal direct quote from this user-) 'us ed people don't want to be helped and we won't stop starving ourselves until we reach the weight we want.'

"You see it as negativity cause you're not disordered." KEEP IN MIND THE PERSON THEY'RE TALKING TO USED TO ACTUALLY HAVE AN ED (the screenshot below is the person they were talking to). I understand you can't push people to get help if they don't want it, but you have to draw a line when you start saying that every person with ed doesn't want help, which just isnt true. I looked at their blog, and it was all just calculating how many calories they ate and burned every day. Most of the posts they basically only totaled 300 calories a day. THAT IS SUPER SICK ☹️. An average human needs like 2000+ calories a day. It actively influences people to copy them by posting and blogging this SUPER unhealthy weight loss. It IS NOT positive on any level. It does nothing good for you. You won't feel any happier when you look in the mirror if all you can feel is pure hunger because you won't give your body what it needs. This is so sad to me because all the comments had people trying to ask how to start starving themselves, and every blog I clicked on all had ed triggers on their posts and bios. Some of those blogs were saying NOT to become like them because they can't see themselves recovering now that they're in too deep.

As said by people online who actually had and got through having an ed, they have explained it is very unhealthy and they were glad to recover. So even though I do not have an ed, and you might think I shouldn't be "judging" people who have them, there are plenty of formerly ed diagnosed people who know the bad effect it has on others/had on them because they can accurately relate. You can still educate people on a subject even if you yourself do not have to suffer from it/have it, as long as you're doing it properly with proven facts (literally all credible research you do anywhere backed by science and experts will prove eds aren't healthy). People educate themselves to teach others about other illnesses, ongoing or past wars in history, etc, they don't have firsthand experience with/from. And they can still be just as valid sometimes.

My whole point here is that on tumblr and so many other social media platforms, I keep seeing people (posts like this and whole blogs centered around this stuff,) encouraging (mainly young) girls to stop eating altogether to have a body that society and other people are more satisfied with. That's why, for a while, I also tried to do the same because of the people saying it was a positive thing to gain a bad relationship with food and start counting your calories to be perfect. I'm also someone who struggles with body image and being shamed for gaining weight. But at some point hou need to realize hurting your body and mental state is SO WRONG. NOBODY is perfect. So don't push you or anyone else to be. I learned this, and I get its super hard to ignore the judgment forced onto you by society and your surroundings, but there will be people who appreciate you just how you are now. Like me.

So with all that said, the moral here is:

Don't starve urself (on purpose. Bc some people genuinely have trouble eating and starve themselves non intentionally. I have friends who do this 😭)

You're perfect how u are now without being as slim as your idols (and even K-pop idols don't tell others usually to be like them because they know that their companies forcing them to strictly control their weight isn't something they want fans to look up to).

Don't force (potential) ed on others

Don't encourage unhealthy relationship with your body and food

I do support people with eds, as long as they aren't trying to make it something others should look up to, and aspire to have.

If you are someone who wants to normalize having an ed as healthy or positive, please do not interact with this blog and feel free to block me :(

Thank you for reading, have a good day and ily for whoever is reading this. 💗💖💓💕

[justsomeoneintoomanyfandoms]

Hi! Can i ask for a matchup with Tokyo Debunker? If yes then thank you so much! Pronouns: any Zodiac: Aquarius Demiromantic Omnisexual MBTI: INTP Personality: I have ADHD, I'd describe myself as someone who is easy going, stubborn, honest and observant, though I dont think im also that good at understanding others emotions and struggles, so usually i try my best to sympathize and find logical advices to help them. My bad trait is that i give up easily at things i dont find myself good at. I also do have some issues trust people and myself, but when i start to trust people, I act more blunt and more teasing towards people, jokes around and can be sarcastic and mean around them. oh and i forget and let go of things really easily, so i dont really hold grudges. Appearance: Im kind of thin, purple with yellow strands, jellyfish hairstyled hair. My hair is pretty short cause i dont tend to like having a long hair to carry around. Orange eyes. My resting bitch face usually look like im mad or exhausted and thats usually why people don't tend to talk to me that much- oh and im about 6'5 and do tend to have scars all over the body because im pretty clumsy and cant concentrate much things around me. Likes: arts in general, i also enjoy watching people do their own activities. I enjoy music in general. Outside of arts, i also like to experience new things as long as it sounds interesting. I find human psychology interesting because we never know what others are thinking and why they think that way (maybe thats why i like taiga sm hshhshs) Dislikes: Bitter food and drinks, chocolate, insects, being forced to do something i dont want to. Hobbies: Listening to all kinds of music and drawing, sleeping and writing stories (i get to analyse people's mind) Thank you for reading if you ever decided to do this request!! I really love your writing style! Sorry if its a bit too long, its my first time asking in tumblr-

Hi! Thank you for your request! Sorry it took a while. I hope you like your matchup!

In Tokyo Debunker, I match you with...

You and Haku are going to be an unstoppable teasing machine. You’re both too stubborn to back down when the other starts the teasing war and everyone around you will just have to deal with it.

I feel like he would also enjoy people watching. I think he finds it interesting watching people interact with the world around them and would like making comments to you and pointing out funny events he sees.

Haku can definitely relate to not liking being forced to do something. His relationship with his family and the shrine says a lot about that. So he’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want to. He values both his and your freedom too much to do that.

Since you have trust issues, I can see a relationship with Haku taking a long time to form. He can come across as ingenuine sometimes or seem like he’s just playing around so he’ll have to work hard to convince you that he really does like you.

I see Haku as someone who loves exploring new places and trying new things so he’s ecstatic that you’re the same. Expect to go on a lot of crazy dates when you both get free time.

[bluebellsstories]

The Amazing Digital Circus severance AU: Meet the outies!

I had more ideas for this and decided that the best way to explore it is with the main cast's other identities!

In the digital adventure work unit, six people work as guides. Each person has their own reason for getting severed.

Agatha (Ragatha) is a mother of five who loves her kids more than anything. She used to be a stay at home mother until an accident put her husband out of work. Now she must provide the money for her family, but how can she balance her work and family life? With severance of course! Now she no longer has to worry about bringing the stress of work back home, giving her all her time to focus on her family. One must wonder where Ragatha's motherly traits come from?

Grace (Gangle) comes from a wealthy family that actually invested in the severance technology for C&A. Grace was force to undergo severance to convince the circus that it was safe. Grace would rather draw pictures and watch anime, but she couldn't say no to her family, so Gangle was born. They say it's fine, but every time she goes to work, she comes out feeling miserable. Could it be a mean co-worker? Regardless, Grace is doomed to be pushed around.

Ray (Kinger) is a kind but odd outcast, who deep down just wants some buddies. Being aware that severance makes you forget your time at work, he nonetheless undergoes it for the potential commodore. And who knows? If he thinks really hard, maybe he will remember something. During the operation, something goes wrong and the chip gets broken. Now Kinger can't remember anything in the digital circus either. Though maybe it's because his memories are mixing...

Jack (Jax) is a complex mix of envy, sadism and hedonist. Jack never cared about having a real job, he just wants to cause problems and have fun doing it. That changes when his sister does something that impresses the whole family. Her making something of herself causes the family to lose faith in Jack. He never had their approval before, but now that they're actively ignoring him, he's a little hurt. After a long time searching, he discovers a job that pays a lot, requires no effort and lets him have fun at other people expense: The digital Circus. Maybe with a steady job, things can go back to the way they were before.

Ash (Zooble) wants to be left alone for the most part. They took the job so that they don't have to remember any people. They wouldn't have even gotten a job if it wasn't so expensive to be alive. Though maybe underneath the cynicism is a person who's unsure about their purpose in life. Maybe they try not to care because caring only hurts you worse in the long run. Though whatever the reason may be, they aren't gonna open up about it anytime soon.

Polly (Pomni) was an accountant caught in a massive layoff at her company. Desperate to find another high paying job, she comes across the Digital Circus thinking that her livelihood was saved. Though the more time she spends working, the more she thinks something is wrong, like her other self doesn't want to be there. She wants to ignore it but she finds herself growing more and more curious. What is the circus like? What is her innie like? She might just have to find that out...

What do y'all think? I certainly had fun writing this! Let me know if y'all want more and I'll come up with something else!

[kuruna]

even if it's interesting to maybe 2 people max i Still must AZ and Xanthos post... anyways i figured out how Xan learns about AZ still being Alive maybe a hundred or two years after the war TW for near drowning + mention of parental death !

To start with... I think in the years following the Ultimate Weapon, AZ ended up living in Hoenn due to events that are too convoluted to explain rn 💕 ORAS implies that AZ has some kind of connection to Rayquaza but doesn't elaborate on it more than that. But I decided that he sorta formed an obsession with it after a dramatic encounter .... some day i would like to draw it. Meanwhile. Well to put it bluntly Xan is straight up not having a good time. due to a series of events he ends up nearly drowning (he can't die due to his immortality, but being kind of immobile while just kinda deep in the ocean is still a bit of a terrifying experience to have). A relicanth ends up saving him, though. he ends up being brought to what is in modern day Sootopolis City.

While he's here just kind of resting up, a stranger comes to him like "Hey that's funny 😋 you look pretty similar to a strange man who used to live near here." and this of course gets Xan's attention despite the fact that he should be trying to recover he immediately gets all excitable. He starts asking a million questions... And of course as he gets his answers he just starts feeling a mix of shock and anger.

And so, some time later, he starts to actively seek AZ out... going from place to place, asking if anyone has seen a strange man with brown hair and his same nose shape. And eventually he does find him...

... Unsurprisingly. This encounter goes very, very horribly 😭 an angry conversation turns into just straight up wailing on one another. Both of them end up saying some cruel things they don't actually mean to one another...

At this point in time AZ sorta unfairly blames Xan for not only Floette's but their mother's death too (she passed of an illness sometime during the war 😔). Xan already blamed himself for these things on his own- another blow to his already incredible sense of shame and guilt. on the other side of it, Xan, king of Repressing His Own Feelings, found AZ's incredible grief inconceivable. This just confirmed something AZ always thought, which is that at no point in time did Xan ever make an effort to actually understand him despite them being family. That Xan at best found him to be an inconvenience, or something to use to further himself along.

AZ knows that Xan would never have done something to harm Floette or their mother, but his anger doesn't let him acknowledge that. Xan feels the same awful grief that AZ does, but his pride and repression doesn't allow him to acknowledge that.

In the modern day... these are topics they tend to avoid with one another 😭 how do you apologize for something like that? Would it even matter? Would it change anything? They're only able to finally be open about it after visiting their mother's grave together... (Before this Floette had been like "will you two PLEAAAASSEEE just be open with one another the whole keeping secrets thing is what led to problems to begin with")

While I'm at it here's an image I made re: their mother and her death i got too embarrassed to post a few weeks ago

[cyrassol]

HI i wrote an incredibly self-indulgent avery fic instead of drawing the requests, here's hoping folks enjoy anyway!!!

Avery x PC — who will they believe?

pc: unnamed, no Y/N either. gendered terms "woman" and "girl" used, but no mention of genitals or defined pronouns. second person POV

avery: male pronouns, amab

word count: little over 2k

content warnings: mild violence (hair pulling, not the kinky kind), "whore" used as a derogatory term once, yelling (avery is ANGRY), typical toxic dol relationships, mentions of and brief (albeit graphic) descriptions of sexual activities in dialogue

description: y'all know the scene with high crime and at least a little rage!avery where they drive you to the police station and threaten to turn you in? and defiant pc claps back? yup, this is based on that one! PC is a successful phantom thief who slipped up, and avery is none too happy about the effects that might have on his reputation

enjoy!!! likes are appreciated, replies and reblogs even more so ❤

•••••••••••••••

There's no way in hell.

"What's wrong, my little nymph?" Avery asks, a worried frown tugging at his mouth as if he hadn't parked on Barb Street, a stone's throw from the fucking police station. At least his car windows are darkened so there's no way for anyone to see you from the outside, but if a cop decides to come closer and investigate then it might all be over.

How does he know, anyway? You've been careful, you've been so goddamn careful—face hidden, gloves to avoid any fingerprints, staying out of sight from any would-be witnesses, doing favors for Landry every other week. No one should have been able to trace you, so how does he know?

And more importantly, why does he care?

"So quiet, all of a sudden," he hums, eyeing a couple of police officers as they escort someone with the same build and hair colour as you into the station. "Nervous, perhaps?"

"What's this about, dear?" you ask, tone dripping with the same insincerity, because one does not mingle with high society every weekend without picking up a thing or two.

"I was hoping you could tell me," he sighs, finally meeting your gaze. His expression and voice are perfectly composed into faux-concern, but as adept as Avery is at pretending he fits right in with the upper echelons of society, he still hasn't learned to mask the rage in his eyes. "I've tried to assume you must have good reasons each time you reject my generosity," he continues, mask briefly slipping when wrath makes his voice quiver on the word 'reject'. "But alas, it'd seem I was mistaken."

He doesn't expect a reply yet, and so you don't give him one. You've turned him down here and there for months and while it's clearly hit a nerve, it's nothing new. He hasn't told you the real reason he's mad yet.

"Instead," he goes on, just as you knew he would, "I start hearing rumours."

Ah. Shit.

"What sort of rumours?" you ask, curiosity feigned and genuine at the same time—feigned because you can already imagine what they are, but you also need to know where you fucked up.

"A phantom thief," Avery says, reaching out to twirl a strand of your hair between his fingers. "Several of my acquaintances have been hit by this scoundrel. They say the thief breaks into a new mansion every night, leaving no trace except for emptied coffers and missing family heirlooms."

You won't lie, the way he's describing you makes you a little proud. It's concerning that your victims have connected the dots that you're a single individual, of course—the chances of you getting caught are significantly higher if they've figured out your modus operandi—but hearing yourself being spoken about in such a romanticised way almost makes you want to keep going exactly as you are.

Provided Avery's bluffing about turning you in, naturally. And if you've messed with his reputation through people somehow figuring out the girl hanging off his arm at social events is the very thief who's robbing them blind, unfortunately there's a very high chance he isn't.

"And what makes you think I'm involved in anything like that, babe?" you ask, perhaps laying it on a bit too thickly with the nickname. He's never asked you to do it, but you figured out a long time ago that hearing a beautiful woman half his age call him that always makes him preen a little.

Avery gives you a tight smile, and it's the only warning you receive before his grip on your hair turns to iron.

"Because, my little sunshine," he grits out through his teeth, "the thief happened not to notice a security camera on their latest little exploit."

"Fuck."

It comes out before you can stop it, but it wouldn't have been any use keeping quiet anyway. Not if you've been caught on a fucking camera.

"Aptly put," he says with a chuckle that's entirely devoid of mirth. "The acquaintance who caught this criminal on camera made sure to show the footage to a whole group of us as well as the police, so we'd know who to be on the lookout for."

"Surely the thief had a mask on," you say, because you did, and also because you're desperately trying to find anything that might give you the plausible deniability you need to save your ass. "And their hair was definitely hidden, too. How would they have been recognised?"

"Their identity is still unknown," he agrees, before pulling painfully at your hair to tug you closer until you're inches from his face and you can see every fleck of green and every speck of rage in his eyes. "I, however, would recognise that ass anywhere, grainy security footage or no." Avery's smile is all teeth and no warmth. "I fuck it every weekend, after all."

You breathe out slowly through your nose, closing your eyes in defeat. "And if you can recognise me, it's only a matter of time until someone else does."

"Good girl," he says, letting go of your hair. "We finally understand each other."

A few moments of silence pass by as you consider your options, and he considers you.

Finally, he turns forward, hazel eyes cold and staring straight ahead at the police station. "Tell me why I shouldn't turn you in."

Chewing your bottom lip, you study him from the corner of your eye. "... Have I ever robbed you?"

He snorts. "Not yet, you haven't."

That's good, at least you haven't made it overly personal. "To be fair, if I had then it wouldn't have been on purpose. I don't know where you live."

"Don't try to distract me," he hisses, immediately erasing any trace of mirth from the conversation. "You're a liability. Who's to say you won't get caught again? Do you have any idea what I'll go through if people find out I was the one who introduced a thief into their midst?"

You'd have robbed them regardless of knowing them or not, but saying that won't do you any favours.

"If merely knowing me is an issue, you're already in trouble," you say instead, and instantly realise it wasn't the correct thing to say either.

"Yes, brat," Avery snarls, eyes flashing. "That is precisely the problem. And right now, I can only see one way to solve it."

"Come on, they don't know who I am yet," you snap, patience running out now that you've already antagonised him anyway. "Turn me in and they'll know for sure that you've been hanging around a criminal."

He scoffs. "I'll plead ignorance, naturally. They have no reason to think I knew anything."

"I'll tell them everything else, then," you vow, because at this point you have nothing left to lose. "Every sordid little detail. They may forgive you for unknowingly associating yourself with a thief, but will your reputation survive word getting out that you approach vulnerable orphans so you have an easy target to groom into the arm candy you want? Into your perfect little sex toy?"

"Whore!" he roars loud enough for you to fear it was heard outside the car, and grabs you by the hair again. "You think you can threaten me?! It'll be my word against a random orphan's, who do you think they'll believe?"

"They may not believe me at first, no," you half-chuckle, half-gasp from the pain. "But once I'm gone and you've found some pretty little socialite to hang off your arm—because it certainly wouldn't do to hang around any more 'random orphans' for a while lest they really start getting suspicious—you know that won't be the end yet."

He opens his mouth to reply, but you don't let him, too incensed to stop now. "It won't be the end, because when that pretty little socialite is sucking your cock in my place, you can bet she'll want to see if those other rumours are true so she can tell her friends. So tell me, sir, when she runs her tongue along the vein under your dick and your eyes roll backward like I said they would, or scrapes her teeth just the tiniest bit against the tip and your hips thrust forward, just like I said they would, who then will they believe?"

For a few seconds, all that's heard inside the car is the sound of your combined laboured breathing. His jaw is clenched so tightly that it'll be a wonder if his teeth are intact after this.

You break the silence first. "Let me go, Avery."

His grip tightens for a moment, before he finally relents. He doesn't speak a word as he turns away from you, switches the ignition on and leaves the parking spot.

"The orphanage?" he asks curtly.

"No," you reply tiredly. "Harvest Street, if it's alright. Need to get some footage deleted as soon as possible."

It's not a request you'd ever risk making normally for many reasons, but these are special circumstances. He hums in acknowledgement, and the rest of the journey is silent.

Finally, Avery parks in an alley close to Harvest Street. The very last part of town that's still respectable, in case there's anyone around to recognise his car.

"Don't tell me where you're going," he says, eyes still staring ahead. "But when you're done, you're coming straight back here. I'll wait."

You grind your teeth, considering your options. He's obviously not happy and you're definitely going to catch hell for earlier, but at least he's not dropping you entirely.

"Twenty minutes, tops," you finally say, and he only nods in reply.

You're back in fifteen. Landry had cringed when you told him about the footage, and luckily you still had some favours he owed you so it didn't take much at all for him to assure you any traces of you would be gone from both police records and private security cameras by the end of the day.

"Will this happen again?" Avery asks, turning on the car as soon as you're back inside it.

"No." You'll make sure of it.

"You must be rather satisfied with yourself." His voice is calm, but when he glances at you, there's still traces of his previous anger in his gaze.

You really aren't. You got caught on camera and nearly lost both your freedom and your most stable source of income for it, as well as whatever weird relationship you two have outside of the sugar daddy and sugar baby dynamic. Avery is a nasty, angry man who thinks throwing money at people will make them love him and cares far too much about what others will say, but none of that means you want to lose him.

No, you're not satisfied at all. But you can't say any of that without reigniting his temper, and you're already on thin ice. So you stay quiet.

Until you notice you're no longer heading towards the orphanage, that is.

"Where are we going?" you ask before you've had time to make sure no panic would slip into your voice.

"My place," he replies, instantly flooring you. "After all, it wouldn't do for you to rob me next simply because you didn't know it was my house."

You open your mouth, but no words come out.

"Plus," he continues, voice far too nonchalant in a way that instantly snaps you back into reality. "You didn't think you were getting away with your little tantrum without consequences, did you? You're lucky I don't give up on you once and for all."

He only briefly looks at you before turning back towards the road, eyes full of rage and lust in equal measures which immediately tell you everything you need to know about what your next hours are going to be like. Possibly the next day.

"Come on, babe," you chuckle nervously, hoping to appeal to the lust you saw in hopes that it makes your punishment if only a little bit lighter. "You know whatever little socialite you found after me was never gonna feel as good as I can make you feel."

His eyes flash towards you again, but he doesn't reply—and yet that matters little, because that brief look was enough to know with full certainty that you're right. You both know damn well he doesn't want to lose you either, whether he wants to admit it or not.

Which he won't, but there's no need for it. After all, Avery's weakness has always been and will always be that no matter what words leave or don't leave his mouth, the truth never stays hidden for long once you look into his eyes.

[exoticalmonde]

Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion (Part III)

Perhaps we are all familiar with this already but I actually spent the time to read it before starting because I didn't want to have yet ANOTHER 'Wow, why did X thing happen?' with Pinkie immediately responding 'Did you read the enemy description?'

WARNING: This post is going to contain a lot of yapping from me about Hoederer and how much I love him and will also have a LOT of spoilers.

13-1 Across the Battlefield's Line

Pinkie: "Dr. Seuss? Like... the one who writes children's books with rhymes?" Me: *Unhappy because from the first moment, I realized that this is Hoederer and he's probably going to start me off with a little trauma and a little loss, a sprinkle of sadness just so I know not to be optimistic about the future*

... I've said it before and I will keep saying it - the history of Sarkaz as a race is so incredibly sad to the point it's a relief that the person you are talking to doesn't actually know who you are because otherwise, they would never treat you with even a smidge of kindness. And in the end, what do you even have to do in a jail cell? He waited around for nothing and got executed.

Of course, not that he had a choice.

---

After Hoederer's introspection we have, what I understood to be, a couple of Sarkaz mercs standing and waiting for commands while trying desperately to get something in their stomachs from what they managed to take steal from around. Including some... very important books perhaps from the library of this mansion.

Calfskin books... I can't decide if that would be more precious than paper.

---

I believe we spoke with Pinkie about this, but it is so immensely sad to see how the Sarkaz race has been in this situation for so long that they actively do not even NEED to be able to read. I can't imagine myself being unable to read, even if it's signs. Letters. How would they otherwise communicate with each other over a long distance? They don't even have families to message sometimes. They probably don't have the paper or means to send them about, since Catastrophe messengers... would probably never be able to take on such messages.

Many of them probably don't have families either. Devastated.

But with this line, it also gives me hope. Sometimes we take the things we have as a given and, at least I, forget that they still have ways of enjoying things by:

Making up stories based on the drawings they see. Which also makes me happy because books with drawings SHOULD be more of a thing, it's so wonderful. I miss it.

Beleaguered Mercenary: [Y'know. If we put houses on the moons, plant our own food, maybe we won't have to keep fighting like this in the future? Maybe something even bigger'll happen, and everyone'll stop wanting to be up in arms?]

He just solved an international crisis with 2 sentences.

Pinkie: "How to solve the problem - we move to the moon." Me: "Multiple even. I forgot they have two moons." Pinkie: "They have one. It was believed that they had two, but one is only a reflection from the barrier." Me: "OH RIGHT!!! I was a common Terran for a second."

---

---

Not that I was endeared to the press in Kazimierz initially after everything in Maria Nearl and Pinus Sylvestris, but for goodness sake... They actually sound like how I imagine the actual press to sound. What they actually do sound like "Shock and awe and make us popular for being the first to write about it."

The things people WITH a press do in comparison to those who need it but do not have it. Perfect way to pace the story, I'm so happy chapter 13 came out.

Have I mentioned that already?

---

SHE IS GOING TO LEITHANIEN!!!!!

---

Crying and sobbing.

---

---

I don't even know what to think about Trillby Asher anymore. Because I very recently finished the Kal'tsit and Passenger story, I kind of know that things are NOT going well with the Emperor's Blades... To see them show up again is giving me wild anxiety because we already know that they are super unstable and they can cause a catastrophe just by showing up.

What even is your purpose? Why are you here?

What even is the point of this, I don't know, but we're saving it in case it shows up again. 11, 29, 1 (code word) I wish this was translatable into English, frankly, your alphabet doesn't have 29 symbols.

HAH! At around this point I was like "OH MY GOSH IS THIS A COLLAPSAL WHAT DO YOU MEAN BLACK SNOW" and then Panko deadpans 'We have seen this before somewhere else' and I realized.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[the-path-to-redemption]

*starting to watch RWBY* OMG so cool!!! i love RWBY!!! ♪♪＼(^ω^＼)( /^ω^)/♪♪ *screenshot screenshot screenshot* i wonder what the fandom is like... Σ(°ロ°) h-HUH?!!! THE Y2K EMO BOYFRIEND (Adam) IS DEAD???!!!! ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) 

i love RWBY but i've been checking the fandom tags on here and.... the fans are too scary....(╥﹏╥) makes me scared for the rest of the anime/series too (i'm only halfway season 2!!!). i already saw that Adam is dead and that he's a groomer??? ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) i thought he was an adolescent....

i think i'll just watch as much as i can and not interact with the fandom!!! but i send you anon message because i saw you like Adam and Sun, me too (っ´ω`c)♡ and Adam and the blue hair guy (forgot his name >< sorry), and Adam and Ren, and Adam and the big chainsaw man... i like other ships of course, i only got very very very very worried about Adam because i thought he would be my best boy.... (╥﹏╥)

BTW, your art is really cool, i love your lineart and the way you do eyes (っ´ω`c)♡ your Yang design looks super duper cute and her hair looks so nice and silky ♡ so envious ♡ what shampoo does she use?

let's ship Adam couples together (っ´ω`c)♡ i hope to have time to make materials in the future....

This is such a nice ask! Thank you, anon! I'm very happy that you like my art, that's so sweet <3. And yay! More shippers for the Crimsun enthusiasts, welcomeeee <3!!! I really like the other ships too, though Neptune is one I haven't considered yet :0. Maybe I'll draw my ships on this blog,,,

I'm very sorry that the FNDM is not a good place for you, but I'm glad that you're going to enjoy what you like nonetheless. Please stay safe, anon!

But on more serious matters; unfortunately, yes Adam's character was quite the controversial one after Volume 3, mostly because the writers decided to forgo a lot of his activism in favor of...being an abuser. It's a very gross direction they've taken him, and sadly that turned a lot of people against him. Which is fine! No one has to like him, but there is a lot of racism against him that his haters would engage in that I do not condone, and that racism traces back to how RWBY as a show doesn't care about the racial activism story that they decided to include to write it properly, especially about how Adam's past and character was treated.

And on the matters of him being a groomer, don't worry! Nowhere in any materials involving RWBY states that he's a groomer or any kind of sexual offender. It's just a very nasty thing that Adam haters create to hate him more, and it's very gross and ignorant. His abuse on Blake was an emotional, then physical one, but never has it been sexual. Nor is he a groomer in any other way, since Blake willingly joined up with the WF. We don't even know how old he is! So you thinking he's an adolescent is not incorrect at all. It's a terrible headcanon made by haters who doesn't care about the terrible implications of grooming to approach it respectfully.

You're more than valid for not wanting to interact with the FNDM, anon! And I'm very happy that you still find some enjoyment out of the show, and I hope that you continue to do so safely. Thank you again for such a nice ask!

P.S. Yang uses a lot of hair product gifted to her by family ;3, which is nice because she goes through them very quickly haha. I'll drop more redesigns in the future, so please give me feedback if you'd like! <3

[brawltogethernow]

How come you got into One Piece but not Dragonball?

Ha, I guess I see the logic behind this question! Well, I enjoy that One Piece is a Journey to the West-inspired story with a powerful idiot for a protagonist, but those aren't the elements I'd consider the draws for me. In the short-term I like power of friendship stories a lot, and in the long-term I ended up vibing with a lot of OP's more slowburn themes (feeding everyone, dunking on the rich, disowning your parents, thumbing it to totalitarian governments, defining freedom, etc. etc.). One Piece is also... Despite the state it's ended up in (very heinous tiddies), it was noticeably non-horny for a pretty big chunk of it, and it has still not capitulated on never doing romance subplots. This is a draw for me.

I didn't catch either of these dubbed on TV at an impressionable age - that would be how I sampled Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon simultaneously and went on to only care about one of them - so I actively sampled them both after hearing about them when I was getting into anime as a teenager who'd just figured out how to stream things. ...I specifically remember staring deeply into a technically correct but extremely useless summary of One Piece before deciding to give it a shot. ("After eating a fruit said to be from the devil, Luffy the pirate CANNOT SWIM.") And I was like, 'Well this is Fine(tm), and I am learning new vocabulary' (after picking up Japanese question words from ygo Season 0, One Piece filled in my pronouns and basic family terms), and then I hit Arlong Park and was like, 'I AM CRYING WITH MY ENTIRE BODY THIS IS NOT FINE,' and like, after you've passed Arlong Park OP owns your ass. I almost dropped it when Foxy happened because the pacing had been starting to suffer from the threat of running out of source material and that arc was just, the last straw, but I switched to the next part of the manga instead and thank god because the manga is even better. What an absolute treat to get to read Water 7 and Thriller Bark as a second beginning of the OP experience. I have still not experienced Foxy in either medium and if I have my way I never will.

With Dragon Ball I just, started the manga from the beginning? It just didn't grab me. I don't even know how much of it I read. It doesn't feel like a lot, but I have no idea. Enough to get tired of it! None of the humor was landing for me because it was largely in various veins I find mildly unpleasant, the kind of big empty-feeling setting isn't really my vibe, and there just wasn't anything else going on. The DBZ abridged series was fun but also failed to capture my interest, ditto the occasional liveblog or video game watched over someone's shoulder.

I see people compliment Dragon Ball as an entry in the comics medium sometimes, and I might sit down with it again at some point for that angle now that I care more about the science of putting comics together. (Have also been meaning to resample Bleach for this reason.) I also understand that it has a pretty established spot to uh, skip to the trolls, as it were, so I might do that if I really just can't pay attention to the first era.

But yeah for now Goku is nothing to me. He's just a guy. I don't know him.

[revcleo]

Ok, one thing I've realised over time is that a lot of people seemingly got into hogwarts as a kid and didn't realise that pretty much every part of the start is barely unique. It's like how AI art draws on people's art to make things. The other thing that I realised over time, is that a lot of things are super surface level, but it feels like a lot of people never saw that, especially people from the USA.

I was reading this article and stopped when I was in the second section because like, I think it's weird how people saw her as supporting people who had been abused. Everything was just a surface level thing. She works backwards from what she wants in a plot, rather than what elements in a story means. Like it's really evident from Shaun's video.

What I'm saying is if there's something you liked about the world of potter, then like, it's probably not come from jk, I heard it was round Order of the phoenix where she was allowed greater creative freedom, and it shows bc that's where I as a 14 year old decided the books really sucked now and I couldn't be bothered with them any more.

Further detail:

Harry's backstory:

Ok we want a special kid, who doesn't really have connections he cares about, so he can develop all his connections later in the story, a sort of black slate with no real problems.

The easiest way to do this is make him an orphan, but not a recent orphan. But then he can't be looked after by the state, so he still has a real family but he can't be close to them, so they have to be stereotypes of big bully characters and uhh send him to the cupboard under the stairs which most post-war uk houses of the time have.

He's not confined there though, but his uncle and aunt who are basically like evil step-mothers talk about how evil he is, but still allow him on school trips because they still allow him to do normal kid things because the plot needs that and they wouldn't take him to the zoo.

Also he's not seriously affected by this, they're just clowns, and he's the protagonist and he knows it. It's not like this is The Little Princess or Oliver Twist. Those protagonists are both sad and pitiful and this protagonist is calm about the whole situation, unless he can pull a prank or something.

Also he can do anything, which means he needs a lot of money suddenly, because the protagonist needs money, and he'll be a good rich person. A quick google says that some people estimated his wealth at over £2 million.

Weasleys poverty:

Ok so we want them to be poor, because The White Working Class are idolised in UK society (even if they're rich landlords now). And they're fine with being poor because they are happy with their lot, can't complain. They mend and make do, and they have a cheerful cottage, they don't spend their money on big televisions and they don't have a lot but they're happy and kind, just like the happy villagers from things such as Postman Pat or whatever else. They don't complain about inequality so much, if they can't afford something they just go without (they don't steal).

They like being poor and don't want handouts so even though Harry could share a lot of his money and solve a lot of their problems they still have to wear handmedown robes and have broken wands because some people just need to be poor for the story. "He would willingly have split all the money in his Gringotts vault with the Weasleys, but he knew they would never take it." This isn't Danny Champion of the World where someone has to do illegal and dangerous activities in part because they're poor. They're the Railway Children sort of poor, where the man who helps the family won't take any charity. The deserving poor, not idle shirkers or layabouts or beggars.

Malfoy:

Ethel Hallow Malfoy is the snobbish, stuck-up, vindictive, and sly rival and enemy of Mildred and her friends. She is favoured by Miss Hardbroom Snape, but appears to have no friends, apart from the rarely seen Drusilla Paddock Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, who is just as bad as Ethel Malfoy. Ethel Malfoy is described as being "one of those lucky people for whom everything goes right" which is what caused her to become so snobby. Ethel Malfoy is tall and thin (just like Mildred Harry) and has blonde hair which she wears in a ponytail with a black hair ribbon.

He's at boarding school like most rich kids because his dad doesn't love him as happens with every member of the aristocracy. Just ignore that everyone else is also at boarding school.

Other aspects: Every school in the uk has houses you get sorted into, it comes from that boarding schools have houses you get sorted into because of them being literal buildings. But then it just propagated though the school system to make it easier to run things like sports day and to count up the amount of detentions, de-merits, merits and distinctions which people get in various teams through the year. Then there's like an assembly at the end where they just say who won, but there's no real prizes for it.

Some schools have more than 4. You either get seperated by where you are in the alphabet, the teachers go through all the names and just pick one after the other (like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4) , or by classroom.

There's no like "are you sanguine or melancholic" lmao

My school houses were Curie (primary) and Stratford (secondary). In secondary we had 6 school houses.

I'm pretty sure if there's anything in harry potter which you like, it's not come from jk's mind, it's either been in other stories, or it's actually something which exists. It's not like she's come up with magic wands or hidden societies.

It's like even the antisemitism, it's not like she invented anything new, she just grabbed old tropes, didn't think about them, she just wanted "creepy little banker" and was like "ah, these tropes are what I think should happen in my story" and then didn't think any further than that. Except when attacked which is when she goes "Well I didn't intend to do that." she didn't intend anything, because she doesn't think, she doesn't step back and look at the bigger picture on anything she does. It's all just individual elements which she feels that she can grab wholesale.

[roo-bastmoon]

Reliable real-time translators

I speak some Japanese and very little French, but I know barely a word of Korean and I'm nosy... so when our boys do Lives, I like to try to follow along by using notifications on certain real-time Twitter translators whom I find to be reliable*.

I'm listing the real-time translator accounts I know of here in case anyone else finds it useful. Please also feel free to comment if you know of others--but read below for the types of accounts I cannot in good faith promote, okay?

SEL and also SEL but for WeVerse stuff

MIINIYOONGS

YOONSEO

KOO PICASSO

CLAIRE

CHARTS K

BANGTAN SUBS

Use this list at your own discretion.

*Please note: I am not a cancel-culture type of person. I'm a Gen Xer and I highly value independent critical thinking skills. I will never throw stones, nor do I typically grab a torch or pitchfork and go after someone in public.

If you're a fascist, racist, sexist, any kind of queerphobic, an anti, a manti, hate on a member, or are a rabid cult member, I will quietly report and block you and then just turn my attention to what I want out of life, not what I don't. (When I say anti, I'm also including people who post sasaeng-type content that endangers our members.)

But I do sometimes follow people I don't agree with, because I don't want to live in an echo chamber. I'm not out to police people--not their thoughts or ships or personal lives. I also allow for people to make mistakes and have flaws, because that's how humans learn, and it's especially commendable if they apologize and are working on changing.

You have to demonstrate to me the active will to lie or cause harm for me to completely reject you--and once I do that, we're done done. So please know, I am very, very careful about how I judge others. Because...

Why am I telling you this?

Because some of these translators post hurriedly and make mistakes, or they mishear, or they have to work or study and cannot always translate for all 7 members every hour of the day. Sometimes they just get it wrong. And I can absolutely forgive that. They are providing a free service, they always apologize for errors, and I know to do my due diligence and get translations from many sources, because Korean is nuanced and tonal and therefore open to some interpretation. Whenever there's a doubt, I ask a native Korean.

What I won't tolerate is a translator picking fights with native speakers, being rude to questioners, or skewing a translation in favor of their ship (or not-ship). Nor will I follow a translator who has hinted at disliking a member, no matter how far back in their past. That's where I draw my lines.

But some folks listed above may be problematic for you. That's cool. If you want to DM me with evidence of intentional wrongdoing, I will listen with an open mind and decide if I need to stop following them or listing them here. But so far, I've been following these folks for months--many of them have been systematically attacked by the cult specifically because they love Jimin or view Jikook positively. They get absolutely railroaded if they get a single phrase wrong and ratioed as antis or liars sometimes. And I'm sorry, but I know from working as an editor of translated novels back in the day, translation is HARD.

Please do your due diligence and police your own internet experience. I cannot judge for you what you find acceptable. There are big accounts that translate but also post hotel info and flight info and photos of the Tannies' homes and family and friends and vacations and rumors and if that sets right with you, that's your business. It's human to be curious and I'm not trying to be judgey, because I've honestly been curious about some of that stuff too, but that's not a loving way to be an ARMY and I'm not gonna promote those accounts.

I will say that in my experience, all humans are flawed, all money is dirty, and all life is about compromise. It's always good to ask people where they stand before making assumptions. Text errors I can forgive; malintent I cannot.

At the end of the day, people who translate with good intentions genuinely amaze me and have my respect.

It's totally fine by me if you don't agree. But don't bring drama to this post. People who bring drama will be forced to ride the drama llama, you hear?

Love, Roo

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 3/28/2023

At my old job, one of my big job functions was taking someone else's code and trying to figure out why they got one answer when they ran it on their system and we got a different answer when we ran it in the operational environment. This was often a long and painstaking process and among the worse parts of it was going to status meetings and announcing that I worked on it all week and found 5 bugs and none of them were the one I was looking for. Literally, no one was ever once disappointed in me for this because a) that's just how this work was and b) everyone knew I was good at it and if I was stuck it was because it was hard, but also, it sucked for me, personally.

Anyway, these weekly updates are starting to feel like that, where it's like "yet another week of not finishing the fanfic." I don't really mean to be pessimistic about it, because I actually feel like it's going decently well, it's just that the progress is not happening in any kind of linear or predictable way.

I made it most of the way through the editing and rearranging phase I was in last week. I still have about 3 scenes at the end that are unfinished, but I decided to put those off for the time being. I've mentioned before that this isn't really a story about events, it's a story about a time, so there's a beginning and an end and some stuff happening in the middle, and right now I'm trying to make the stuff in the middle feel like it's going somewhere and is not just a random collection of scenes. I've actually been thinking about the story when I am not actively working on it, which was hard to do earlier on. I've got a much better idea of what each of the characters is going through and I've been rearranging and adding scenes to try to punch up some of those themes. (The reason I left those last few scenes until later is that I need those to sort of wrap things up, and I can't wrap until I know what I'm wrapping, y'know?)

If you put a gun to my head, I could finish the thing in a day or two, but it would be kinda shitty. Every day, I work on it and it gets a little less shitty. There are definitely bits of it that I like. I hope to eventually get to a place where it's not shitty, or at very least, I'm out of ways to improve it.

I like to be done things and I have to remind myself that sitting with my work is good and important and also the point, like I write for the experience of writing and for my own mental health, not for churning out stuff, it's not like I get paid or anything. Also, I've worked on this fic for a really long time and it's a story that's important to me and I want it not to suck. I am, however, very very very sorry to all six or however many of you read these updates and sigh heavily.

Also, I kinda have a lot of other stuff going on. One of the effects of living under late-stage capitalism is convincing yourself that all the stuff that you do that's not paid employment, like grocery shopping and helping people move and running a child's health form to the doctor and back and doing taxes and driving the dog to chemotherapy all don't count and so I feel like I never do anything and am pathetic, but I actually do kind of a lot of things.

I realized yesterday that it was the 27th and I had not really drawn anything all month, so I started drawing a thing and I rushed through it a little, because I was mostly doing it so that I didn't have a blank space for March when I do my year-end retro, but then I realized I didn't want to put something that sucked there, either. (by rushed, I did spend, like an hour or two on this). I do have a few more days in the month, so maybe I can keep working on it.

I am pleased to report that I Made A Good Cake for Mr. P's birthday. It was an Almond Tres Leches Cake. It wasn't exactly pretty, but it was tasty. I made two modifications to the recipe. (1) It was just for our family, so I halved the recipe. I cooked the whole thing in one 9x13, and cut it in half widthwise and stacked the two halves. This worked out great, would recommend. (2) There was a comment on the recipe where someone said they used raspberry preserves instead of apricot and I did that, too, because Mr. P prefers raspberry.

This was definitely one of the nicest sponges I have ever made. I did a really good job whipping the eggs, if I do say so myself. It baked up nice and tall and had great flavor. If I made this again, I would consider using fresh raspberries and cooking them into a compote instead of storebought jam, but the jam was fine, actually! It was chilled from being in the fridge, and I think this would make a really nice summer desert. Both Mr P and Polynya Jr rated it among my Top Cakes. (Polynya the Smallest did not care for it, but it's simply not possible to please all the people in my house at the same time). The cake also gets bonus points for using some of the almond flour AND cake flour that I already had in my pantry from previous projects.

Oh, yeah, the childrens' spring break is next week. 😬

I almost forgot! We also went to the arboretum to see the cherry blossoms and we also visited our friends the koi. LOOK AT THIS BIG CHONK AND THEIR ENTOURAGE.

This wasn't even the biggest chonk there, it's just the one I managed to get a picture of.

[softlyfiercely]

FOR THoSE FOLLOWING THE #EASTERBASKETS SAGA

I can happily report that while it was still a bit of a clusterfuck, it was a clusterfuck in predictable and unavoidable ways, for which I was prepared for, and

I TOTALLY PULLED IT OFF.

So, initially, I'd decided to make the "Easter Gift Making" event begin at 1:00 in the afternoon on Holy Saturday. I chose this time because it would have been a major hassle to include lunch in the program but it needed to be early enough in the day to allow time for drivers to deliver them but also not require people to wake up early on a Saturday, so can't be "after breakfast before lunch."

(Church programming for children and families almost always includes food, so I either needed to meet that expectation or explicitly buck it)

HOWEVER

All the schools in this area happen to be on spring break THIS WEEK, so like 90% of the most engaged, involved children & families were like "sorry we won't be there for any Holy Week stuff"

(this has caused some Consternation re: children's involvement in Maundy Thursday and Palm Sunday and Good Friday stuff, so, it's just been part of the larger situation surrounding The Easter Baskets)

so, I'd only heard from two families that they were coming, and it's two kids who are friends, so then one family said they actually had a conflict at 1:00 but could come at 11:00, I was like you know what, sure. we'll be there at 11:00.

But of course there still has to be something for kids who arrive at 1:00 to do, because that WAS the initially set time for the event, and we don't technically require RSVPs, it's just that things are so shoestring right now that it comes down to stuff like this.

so I tell the other family "hey, if your kid comes at 1:00, they might be the only one there, but their friend will be there at 11:00" and they were like ok cool we can actually change our plans

so then at 11:00 I just set up with two kids and we got going.

unfortunately if you remember from chapter one of this saga i am inexplicably sharing on tumblr, the whole activity of "making the easter gifts" was designed to be something where a bunch of kids (6-12 is the average attendance at these things) can have a good time making them. so it was just very different Vibes. and we set up in the kitchen where one kid's mom was setting up for tomorrow's Easter Brunch instead of the usual children's programming space, and we just got to it

the two kids had a great time, they got to be very involved and hands-on. and the Easter gifts got made and they were lovely - I wish I could have taken a photo for y'all but there would be no way to show them to you without being somehow identifying.

we cut and tied ribbons around the jars. they filled the jars with water and arranged the flowers in the jars. then they put these watercolor flower stickers on some pastel colored gift bags I'd gotten.

then they colored in cards that i had made, which had a FUCKING TASTEFUL AND CUTE, NOT BANANAS "Happy Easter" line drawing with crosses and bunnies that the kids could color in, and then on the inside it said "my name is" "i am years old" "my Easter prayer for you is" and the kids, in their adorable little kid handwriting and spelling, wrote their names, their ages, and their Easter prayers which were things like "we are thikig of you" and "haav a joyful easter"

and then they helped me make sure one of each thing that i had prepared earlier (chocolate bar, Easter bulletin, "scriptural item," and card signed by priest) was in each bag.

as a bonus, because we only had two kids, and one of the kids belonged to the parent who was there prepping tomorrow's brunch, she just kind of fed us lunch from the leftovers of what she was making, so the food thing actually totally worked out

then, of course I had to wait until 1:00, and sure enough, a family showed up with their two kids, and by then the other two kids had left for their other engagements, so it was awkward in that way of "yay...you're the only ones here..." but I was prepared for that as much as I could be, and so we set up with the cards and they made some more cards, and we added them to the bags.

and i got some quality one-on-one time with the kids, who haven't been around as much so I don't know them as well, and we had some good bonding, and the cards they made were really sweet (they were a bit older than the other kids, the children's program is all ages 5-11 which is a wide developmental range)

and THEN, THE DELIVERIES which were an absolute fucking NIGHTMARE last year, but they went so smoothly.

There was one address that was pretty far out and I was worried about finding a driver for that, but then a friend of that guy's just emailed me like "hey I'll take his basket" (THEY'RE NOT BASKETS) so that was a problem solved. and then i lined up some volunteers for deliveries, but one of them dropped out last minute which would have sucked EXCEPT that the family that came late/on time was like oh we wanted to deliver some, so i got to be like oh sure yes definitely! here is a formational participation opportunity just for you!!!

and one of the other delivery volunteers sent me an email afetrwards thanking me for organizing this and saying she'd had a great time delivering them and wished she'd signed up for more!

augh - i'm just, i'm good at my job, y'all. i figured out how to make this a positive, formational, community building experience for all involved despite some pretty major challenges!

now...on to the sunrise vigil! at which i will be performing a poem! that i wrote! just now! aaahhh!